Suspicious Minds
by TantalumCobolt
Summary: A missing scene from my fic 'And It All Went Downhill From There' to explain why Ethan, Jane and Benji didn't partake in a global manhunt for their apparently kidnapped teammate.


"You **what**?"

Benji winces in the face of Ethan Hunt's wrath. "Well, you see, it really wasn't our fault-"

Ethan snaps. He slams his hand down on the wooden table and Benji jumps backwards. "You lost Brandt! And now you're saying it wasn't your **fault**!?"

Benji looks to Jane for help but the brunette agent is talking on the phone in the corner of the room, reaching out to contacts in Cairo who might be able to tell them anything. "Uh... Yes?" the tech specialist stammers, cowering under the glare Ethan levels at him.

"How?" The team leader demands. "And what the hell was he doing here? The Secretary assured me he'd be in Beijing for another week at least."

Benji fiddles with the buttons on his cuffs. "Well, he said he'd finished early. And then there was Stark - the guy really is a genius, Ethan, a bit of a dick, but still a genius - who he's apparently friends with - how did we not know that, by the way?"

Ethan ignores the question. He's mostly accepted by this point that there will always be some little tidbit of information he doesn't know about the sometimes-agent-sometimes-analyst. Which is extremely infuriating, actually, especially to a man like Ethan, who is used to gathering intel from all sources and knowing everything there is to know.

"Benji, focus. You questioned everyone at the pub, right? Did anyone see anything?" he asks.

Benji shakes his head. "Everyone was too busy being terrified by the masked gunmen to notice anything that could help us."

Ethan sighs. "So no leads."

"Not quite," Jane disagrees, rejoining the conversation. "I just spoke to Carlos and he said a jet owned by the one and only Tony Stark left a private airstrip outside Cairo twenty minutes after the time Brandt and Stark were kidnapped."

A frown creases the senior IMF agent's brow as he mulls over that information. "So they took Stark's private jet? That's a bit stu-"

The shrill ringing of Benji's phone cuts off the rest of that thought, causing the techy to jump a foot in the air. Ethan and Jane just raise eyebrows as he fumbles to get it out of his pocket, then stops, staring at the lit up display in obvious surprise.

"It's Brandt," Benji declares, waving the phone in his teammates' direction.

"Well answer it then," Ethan snaps.

"What? Oh- oh yeah," the tech specialist stammers, hurrying to swipe across the screen. "Hello?" he answers cautiously. "Brandt?"

"The one and only," is the dry response

"Wha- but you got kidnapped!" Benji exclaims, ignoring the way Ethan and Jane are gesturing at him to put the phone on speaker.

Brandt chuckles, an embarrassed tinged to the (somewhat relieving) sound. "Yeah. About that..."

 **"Speaker,"** Ethan hisses, eye flashing with frustration. Benji holds up a hand in surrender and hits the speaker button, setting the mobile on the tabletop so they can all crowd around it.

"I wasn't **actually** kidnapped," their sometimes-field-agent-sometimes-analyst explains. "I played a prank on Tony a couple of weeks ago and this was his brilliant idea of getting back at me."

"They had **guns** , Brandt," Ethan interrupts.

Brandt's frown is clear even through the phone line. "Ethan?" he asks, then he groans, "Oh god please tell me you haven't set the mission on hold to look for me."

It's Jane's turn to chime in, her own frown evident in her voice. "Like Benji said; you were **kidnapped**. Of course we looked for you."

The three teammates exchange glances as Brandt sighs, listening to the muffled sounds of him moving around, then the scratch of fabric that signifies the phone being covered as he talks with someone. There's another beat of silence before his voice comes clearly over the line again.

"Okay I'm sorry about the whole fake-kidnapping thing but I'm fine so you guys can stop worrying and get back to work."

"Where are you?" Jane asks. "Are you rejoining us in Cairo?"

"Um..." There's the rustle of fabric as he moves around again, then a faint click and a murmured female voice. "We're in Athens - well, not quite, but we will be soon. And no, I won't be rejoining you. Something came up at home."

'Home?' Jane mouths at Ethan, even as Benji asks Beandt, "Anything we need to be aware of?"

"No, no-" The female voice sounds again, a little louder than before, saying something in Russian that makes Erhan frown. "-it's a personal thing, not work related. I'll see you guys back in the states, though, okay? Good luck in Cairo, try not to get shot- again."

And with those final parting words, Brandt hangs up, leaving Ethan, Jane and Benji to trade wondering looks to the soundtrack of the mechanical beep of the dial tone. Ethan is the first to move, running a hand through his short (for the moment at least) hair and crossing the room to the duffle bag on a chair in the corner.

"Jane, put this one," he orders, pulling out a loose-fitting sundress. "You and me are doing recon on the target. Benji you're on comms."

Both agents just stare at him and Ethan sighs impatiently. "Brandt's alive, he hasn't been kidnapped so he will most likely continue to stay alive, and we have work to do," he says. "So let's get back to the mission before the new secretary has our heads for letting the target get away."

Benji's hand flutters vaguely upwards before falling to rest on the table again. "So you're not- I mean that didn't-" the tech flaps his hand again, the gesture recognisable as a vague conveyance or 'you know what I mean'.

"I think what Benji means," Jane picks up, glancing at Benji with a small half-smile. "Is: don't you think that phone call was a little suspiciou?."

Ethan frowns. He opens his mouth to respond - to deny it? To agree that, yeah, maybe it's a little suspicious that their supposedly-kidnapped agent just called to tell them to stop looking because he wasn't actually kidnapped but he wouldn't see them for a while? - but the cheerful chime of an incoming text message from the mobile phone still sitting on the table sounds before he can find the words.

All three agents tech for the phone, but it's Benji who snatched it up first, holding it close to his chest as waggling his finger in his teammates direction. The gesture managed to convert his thoughts that how dare they try to read his messages.

"Is a ransom?"

"An SOS message?"

"A GPS ping?"

"Is he really an route to Athens?"

"Woah, woah, woah," Benji says, holding up a hand to forestall his teammates' barrage of questions. "It's a photo." Jane and Erhan open their mouthed to question more and Benjj hurries to explain before their voices assault him again. "It's of Brandt. He's fine, he's unhurt, he's smiling - even if it is a little on the sarcastic side - and I'm pretty sure he even holding a glass of whiskey."

With a dramatic flourish, he presents the phone to Jane and Ethan. The two senior agents peer at the screen for a second before leaning back, Ethan rolling his eyes, Jane smiling.

"What did I tell you?" Ethan asks rhetorically. "Brandt is perfectly fine and there is absolutely no need to worry."

It's not until almost twenty minutes later, when Jane and Ethan are it stalking their target and Benji is monitoring comms. and surveillance, that the tech specialist takes a moment to think over those words. Then he pauses in his scrutiny of Cairo's street plan to wonder aloud:

"Wait, when did you say we shouldn't worry? You were the one who insisted we stop tracking the target to hunt Brandt down!"


End file.
